Redrawn

Draw a flag, a country's border, a logo or an emoji from memory. Redrawn scores it out of 100 against the real thing and keeps your best as a sticker in a sketchbook.

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Entered for

Award The case Video
RevenueCat Design Award A drawing game built as a real sketchbook. 0:28
Best Game Draw it from memory and see how close you got. 0:00
HAMM Free to play, with packs, Redrawn+, Lifetime and ads. 1:07
Catvertising One ad card, clipped to the cover. 1:19

What it does

Redrawn gives you a name and a blank page. Draw the flag, the country's border, the logo or the emoji from memory, and Redrawn tapes your drawing beside the real thing with a score out of 100.

A Finland flag drawn from memory beside the real flag, scored out of 100 with a star

Every score earns a star, from red up to holo. Your best drawing becomes a sticker in your album, and you can redraw anything to beat it. There are 182 things to draw at launch, 48 of them free.

The album, where every best drawing becomes a sticker

Everyone gets the same Daily. It's always free, and drawing it unlocks that target for good, even from a paid pack.

Design Award: where to look

  • Tap the gear on the cover. The whole book turns over to Settings. Video 0:50.
  • Draw a flag. The pen tray holds only that flag's colours. Pick a pen and it lifts out and uncaps. Video 0:07.
  • Finish the drawing. It's taped beside the real thing, the score ring counts up, and a foil star presses down with a firm haptic. Video 0:11.
  • Open the album. Your best drawing is stuck in as a sticker. Video 0:17.
  • Tap a locked pack. Its card slides in and swivels like a real card. Video 1:34.
  • Look at the bottom of the cover. The only ad card is paperclipped there and stamped "Ad". Video 1:19.
  • Look at any shadow. Every one falls from the same light, top left. Video 0:39.

The cover turning over, like a real sketchbook, to show Settings on the back

Tap the gear and the whole book turns over.

Inspiration

I like quiz games like "can you draw the flag?" I wanted to know if I actually knew all the flags, and how close I'd get drawing one from memory instead of picking it from a list. Then: could I draw a country's border from memory if I had to? Logos and emoji came after that.

I wanted to score something objective rather than subjective, like a drawing of anything. A flag has a real answer, so I could give a score, and the score means something.

A flag has a real answer, so the score means something.

How I built it

I spent a long time prototyping on paper before I touched any code. Every screen started as a mock-up in a real sketchbook, and I planned how it should look and how it should feel to touch.

From paper to app: the paper mock-ups beside the screens they became

Then I took the designs into Claude Design, iterated there and turned them into a design system. Claude Code and Codex built the app from it: a component library, a haptic system and an icon library. Because every screen comes from the library, I could change a component once and the whole app followed, and everything stayed consistent. It's Expo and React Native, with Skia for the drawing and RevenueCat for packs, Redrawn+ and ads.

Each category has its own scorer. A flag is compared colour by colour against its own palette, logos and emoji on how much of the mark you hit without spilling outside it, and a border as a thin line against the real outline. I tuned the border scorer against simulated careful and careless drawings and scribbles, so a careful attempt gets a lift and a scribble doesn't.

HAMM and Catvertising: how it makes money

48 drawings are free forever. Beyond that, buy a pack once and keep it, subscribe to Redrawn+ for every pack and no ads, with a 7-day free trial on the yearly plan, or buy Lifetime once. Free players see one ad card on the cover. The whole model is at 1:07 in the video.

The ad card is paperclipped to the cover and stamped "Ad". No ad ever plays while you draw, and no ad plays that you didn't tap for. There are no interstitials, banners or app-open ads in the app at all. With no ad loaded, the card shows a house ad for a pack you don't own. Tap it and that pack opens, so you can buy it or watch a rewarded video for one try at one of its drawings. The card is at 1:19 in the video, and the rewarded video at 1:33.

The ad card clipped into the book, and the rewarded video by a locked drawing

AdMob serves the ads, and every ad event goes to RevenueCat's ad tracker, tagged by placement, so ad revenue sits next to purchases. Redrawn+ or Lifetime removes the card; a pack doesn't. I haven't promoted Redrawn yet, so there's no revenue to report.

Challenges

The page turns. I wanted three kinds: the cover lifting like heavy card, the album's pages rolling over, and the whole book flipping over to Settings. They had to stay responsive and feel like real paper and card. They worked in an HTML prototype, but not in the app at first. I tried real 3D and fought to keep it smooth. I switched the turns off for a while, built the rest of the app, then came back and got them right.

Scope was the other one. I cut a wall of other players' drawings, a supplies shop, custom washi tape and multiplayer, so I could spend the time on the design and polish everything that was left.

What I learned

It's my first proper game. I'm used to websites and productivity apps, so I had to learn what makes a game satisfying: how every interaction, animation and haptic adds up to make it feel juicy. Consistency matters as much. A shadow only looks right if every shadow comes from the same light, so the whole app uses one light source, top left. Realism can't cost readability either, so the shadows are capped to keep text clear.

One light source, top left. Every shadow in the app falls the same way.

What's next

I haven't promoted Redrawn yet, so that comes first: telling people about it, seeing how players use it, and building what they ask for. Multiplayer, so friends can play head to head, and a place to see other players' drawings are at the top of my list.

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